A Most Perfect Day

      Yesterday was a perfect day! A rare day of connecting with a best friend and a favourite setting.

      I spent the day at Granville Island Public Market in Vancouver. A waterfront market, the place was abuzz with tourists and regulars and good friend Nan and I took it all in. Outside, the rain held off and a row of cyclists in neon jerseys savoured pastries and sausages while listening to buskers on guitar and pan flute. Pigeons pecked underfoot, unconcerned about getting stepped on and gulls were watchful for stray food opportunities.

       We walked the waterfront there. Aquabus and False Creek Ferries were busy taking walkers back and forth across the water. High priced houseboats are moored there. A romantic notion, a houseboat, but having to contend with people like me looking into your windows squashes the idea quickly. And I knew someone once who lived on a boat and a mild mildewy odour seemed to follow her everywhere.



Walking the Boardwalk at the Market

        We strolled throught the best art store ever...OPUS! Oh, the money we spent there in the nineties! Every form of creative tool can be found. If I didn't have a luggage weight restriction coming up on Sunday morning, I could have filled a spare suitcase with journal books, watercolour paper and brushes to cart home.

       Inside the market, ethnic delights, rows of fresh blooms and creative displays of common and exotic fruits and vegetables joined tempting pie places, sausage vendors and bakeries. Precarious piles of strawberries and rare fruits abound.  And the flowers....so artistically arranged, they were hard to resist. I purchased a nosegay of daffodils. It was like spring tied up with raffia in a celophane bag.

       The very best part of this most perfect day, was having hours and hours to catch up with a most treasured friend, Nan. We've known each other over 20 years and many miles separate us. But when we sit down together, we remember the past, catch up on the present and anticipate our futures. We tell our stories and cry and laugh. And I am just so grateful that the Lord brought us together to enjoy the market in the heart of this beautiful west coast city.